What's New Archive ● 2019 ● October
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October 31, 2019
Added God Doesn't Punish? (2019) by Michael Moore to the Christian Worldview page under Christianity and Psychology of Religion page under Theism in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.
Apologists from several different Christian denominations paradoxically maintain that God doesn't punish sinners, but instead shows mercy on them. In his final essay the late Michael Moore categorizes the kinds of contortions that these apologists explicitly resort to in order to rationalize the numerous biblical passages that show otherwise. Moore concludes that there are four standard responses to the paradox: God shows his mercy by (1) playing word games, (2) letting the Devil do his punishing for him, (3) punishing only those who fail to play by the rules, or (4) making bad things happen in order to demonstrate his greatness.
In what sociologists call a total institution, daily life is strictly regulated according to the norms, rules, and schedules set forth by a single authority, whose subordinates enforce these directives. Erving Goffman's original typology of total institutions included (among other things) convents, nursing homes, boarding schools, prisons, and concentration camps, but subsequent scholars have expanded it to include elementary schools, the home, the media, tourism, universities, and other organizations. In this essay Michael Moore argues that religion should also take its rightful place alongside these institutions since it, too, exerts control over its subjects by "putting to death" one's self along the same seven dimensions that characterize other total institutions.
New in the Kiosk: Meditation, Spirituality, Enlightenment? (2019) by Anthony Campbell
Do you meditate? If so, why? Is it because you are spiritual? Do you hope that it may lead to enlightenment? What is enlightenment anyway? Does it even exist? In this article Anthony Campell considers these questions in the light of his experience of two methods of meditation, Transcendental Meditation (TM) and Buddhist insight meditation (mindfulness).